


Before Daybreak

by Cafelatte100



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Aman (Tolkien), Childhood, Gen, Music, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 08:22:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30035817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cafelatte100/pseuds/Cafelatte100
Summary: Like a rainbow after the rain, there was a time before the birth of the Sun and Moon, when a starry-bow opened after a season of shooting stars every 11 Valian years.Fingon wonders if music can reach someone in another world.
Relationships: Aredhel & Fingon | Findekáno, Fingon | Findekáno & Maedhros | Maitimo
Comments: 14
Kudos: 26





	Before Daybreak

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Russo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Russo/gifts).



> Gift fic for my dear friend, Russo!
> 
> I don’t know if you’ll see this story @Bunn, but if you do, thank you for letting me use your headcanon about Manwë having an aeolian harp if he were to have a musical instrument. And thanks everyone from Silm Discord who shared your fun headcanons with me about Manwë’s instrument! I really enjoyed reading all your responses and I can totally see him associated with all the different instruments you guys pictured him with! :)
> 
> Thank you @Raphaela_Crowley with motivation and @Aini_Nufire for the edits! All remaining errors are mine and feel free to point out any typos/mistakes in the comments!

***~*~*~*~***

**Prologue**

In the beginning, the Encircling Sea had been joined with the heavens; for during the Great Music of the Ainur, the edges of the ocean and the seas of heaven were seamed together.

But Melkor in his uproar tore open the invisible strings joining the Two Seas, and air was sundered from water ever since. As the Ekkaia was pulled apart from the seas of heaven, the rent in the sky brought the stars near the edge to fall—and thus, the first of Varda’s weeping stars spilled from the firmament.

As the sky broke for the first starry rain, Varda hastily gathered all the seashells in the heavens—remnants when the Two Oceans were once one, and when no walls or door yet separated the Ekkaia from the Heavens; she then poured her light into them and hung the last remaining sky-shells in the highest vaults of the heavens. (When men came into the world and discovered glass that could magnify remote objects in the sky in the distant future, they named these starry shells— _spiral galaxies_.) Ulmo in turn poured his music into Varda’s fallen tears upon his waters, and the heart of the ocean called them to be reborn as sea creatures—ocean fish in the shape of stars.

To heal the rent left behind where the sea and the sky had been sundered, Manwë and Ulmo forged new melodies and wove an arch pathway between air and water. Varda then strung the pathway with her pearl-white spheres made from the Wells beneath the Two Trees. Thus, every eleven Valian years, the arch opened up for three days after a season of weeping stars, and elves made many songs of the visiting star-way stretching from the ocean to the sky.

Then in the hour when Melkor and Ungoliant destroyed the Two Trees, Valinor was plunged into sudden darkness. And during the Long Night that followed before the rising of the Sun and the Moon, the distance between the skies and Arda spread irrevocably. The bridge of lights no longer returned every eleven years, for the song-filled stars had come from the Wells of Varda, and Ungoliant had drained the vats.

Thus is the story of the lost star-way between Heaven and Arda in a time before the Darkening of Valinor. Though the ancient heavenly arc had remained forever unseen since the death of the Two Trees, it was carried and remembered in Elven songs of old.

~*~*~*~*~

Fingon sat alone by the seaside with his harp upon his lap. After his release from the Halls of Mandos and many tearful reunions which followed, he asked for three things: the ocean he loved as a child, the stars, and a harp.

To Fingon’s surprise and delight, he discovered when he removed the coverings that they had given him his old harp; it was the same one which had been his faithful companion all throughout his previous life, even as he journeyed to the darkest corners of Arda in search of his childhood friend. It felt both strangely new and familiar to hold the one object which remained so dear to him. New, because of the overwhelming joy of recognition he experienced from seeing his lifelong musical companion again, but also familiar—because the harp was indeed, definitely his; it looked just as he remembered it. And the instrument even sounded and responded to his touch the same way when he unraveled his first chord as if he had never been apart from it for more than a day. _How did the harp even get here?_ Fingon mused to himself, for the last time he saw the instrument was in Barad Eithel.

He was positioning his fingers upon the strings again for a song when he caught sight of a silver tailed light swiftly sailing across the sky. It was the first shooting star he witnessed since his re-embodiment and he found himself momentarily paralyzed, fixing his gaze upon the patch of sky where he had seen the light; he knew it was already far gone, yet he waited, absurdly half-expecting to see the same moving light again. The winged star had left him with a too familiar ache lancing through all the edges of his spirit where his soul had been woven with another’s—a quietly piercing emptiness like the hollow space left behind when the ocean had been sundered from the heavenly seas.

As the sea breeze softly chanted against the sustained timeless note of the ocean’s melancholy, a distant memory from another life stung his heart, and before he even realized his face had become soaked in tears, he remembered a voice—a sound so much like a poignant song sung in a lost language.

1298 Y.T. - Childhood

“All right, now, open your eyes, Finno,” a soft voice spoke from behind his ears.

“Maitimo, that’s…” Fingon trailed off when Maedhros’ hands were removed from his eyes. Fingon had lost his words; for it was his first time seeing thousands and thousands of glowing orbs weightlessly crown the space between the ocean and the sky.

The two of them were by the sea sitting side by side upon white sands, when the season of weeping stars gave way to a new song; and Varda’s pearls were strung in the air like a suspended waterfall of cascading lights, plunging from the heavens to the ocean, stretching from blue to blue.

“It’s like the jewel flowers caught inside the light kaleidoscope you built for me years ago had all escaped and unfolded as stars…” Fingon finally managed to speak as his eyes were still transfixed upon the wondrous arc; for it was a sight which could make one forget where he was—a waking dream made of silver-white maze that flickered in and out of innumerable shades of breathtaking light. Like an unending floating bridge covered in Telperion flowers, a shimmering river pulsing with star upon star spanned from the swaying ocean waves to beyond the clouds. And as Manwë’s breath of wind moved between the strings of Varda’s aeolian harp—a gift he had given her—a softly lilting fragrance of silver petals awakened in infinite fractals from every light surrounding the two young elves.

“Did you ever wonder what it’d be like to be able to stand upon that bridge, Maitimo?” Fingon asked as he tugged Maedhros’ sleeve. “Or to climb it if one could? Atar told me a story once before bed. It was about a harp in the sky, you see… do you suppose there could be such a lyre above those clouds?”

Fingon pointed to the starry bridge then made a gesture of flying as he laughed.

“Had I but a pair of wings, or a kite built big enough to carry me up as high as the very top of that arc, and maybe even beyond… I’d go on a quest. And then maybe I can even find a neat harp like the one from Atar’s story.”

“Wonderful. That way instead of me, you’d keep the Valar busy for a change. And I’d have a day off,” Maedhros quipped. “And while we’re on the topic, if a kite could carry an elf, I’d like to strap Moryo on it too, cut the string, and send him off for an hour or two. Especially when he’s throwing a tantrum.”

“But… you’re only here with us in Summers, Maitimo. I thought…” Fingon protested. “If I had known or suspected you felt bothered—” he stammered, his ingenuous big eyes obviously betraying his still adolescent credulity.

“I’m only teasing, little one,” Maedhros mollified, suddenly feeling like an idiot. He cleared his throat in embarrassment and looked away. “So what’s the story? I assume you’ll want to tell as usual?”

“You’ve never heard of the lyre in the sky? I thought it was a bedtime story everyone knew. Perhaps it’s one of Atar’s own stories. He often doesn’t clarify if the stories he tells are ones he made up for me, or from his favorite bards.

It’s about a little elf who dwelt in the heavens. He was like us—except he couldn’t mature or grow. He was an immortal child made in the image of a star’s first laughter.

The little elf only had a few possessions: a boat steered by the wind, fishing rods, and a companion lamb made from pillowy clouds. His days were filled with marvelous adventures, for the sky was always growing, constantly expanding outwards—with new collection of stars and funny-looking cloud-animals being born every hour. And as the little elf and his friend sailed across the seas of heaven, mirth and joy followed them.

But one day, the boat was carried off course; it sailed near a vortex, and the tempestuous whirlpool, much akin to uncle Fëanáro’s dark temper, snatched the lamb from the elf’s boat, and the little elf watched in horror as his friend disappeared into the dark abyss.”

Fingon frowned dramatically, making a whooshing sound as he simultaneously tried to imitate Fëanor’s facial expression. Maedhros raised an eyebrow at his cousin but said nothing.

“Unable to part with his companion, the little elf jumped after the lamb. But when the walls of the black whirlwind rapidly closed in around him, his spirit suffered and withered amidst the absence of light, for to the little elf, living light was sustenance like air. With the last of his fading strength, he cried out to the stars; and he prayed not for himself, but for the lamb he loved and could not save.

His prayer was speedily answered; for the Queen of the Stars calmed and lulled the stormy vortex to sleep as she played her starry lyre. The queen’s harp was an instrument like no other, for its voice could travel throughout all the ever expanding skies, and there wasn’t a distance too remote or impossible for its reach, even to the most hidden of the hidden.

And as the lyre sang, its strings twisted and stretched beyond their bounds in curves of consonant lights, and sound-braids without ends extended into all the far corners of the heavens—its music propagating and spreading in every direction. And within the breaths of silence and the spaces in between the chords, the queen beheld all the movements in the heavens underneath her fingertips—from the dance of the celestial bodies to even the soundless footsteps of all the funny-shaped cloud-animals.

And thus, when the harp’s song had stilled the stormy vortex to slumber, divine light curved to reach deep within its darkest walls, weaving a protective labyrinth around the elf child. For within the overlapping, interlacing maze made of light was a secret path in which only the elf child could find his lamb—so well concealed that it was like a moth hidden in plain sight camouflaged by the clever pattern of its wings. And so the elf child was reunited with his friend, escaping the deadly vortex together through walking upon the lyre’s song of starlight woven for them.”

“Walking upon song, you say?” Maedhros quietly remarked as he lay down on the sand with his arms behind his head.

“It’s just a story for children,” Fingon replied.

“Hm.” Maedhros gave his younger cousin a small smile before returning his gaze upon the star-way arc.

Fingon smiled back as he watched his friend. For a fleeting moment, Fingon wondered if all the silver-white dew of Telperion had fallen through his cousin’s eyes as countless luminescent little orbs trilled against the two still lakes of sea-green.

“I wondered about something, Maitimo…” Fingon spoke shyly. “Do you think that the stars would know us, like how we know them?”

“How do you mean?"

“If one may carry the stars and their lights inside a song, could one hope that the stars take something from us too? That when we sing for them, their lights may carry something of us and our music too, perhaps across worlds to a place we cannot go with our feet? A place we cannot reach?”

“I can’t speak for them, Finno. But starlight—well, they travel so far, and not just in made-up stories—in a way sound cannot on its own, and I suppose… who is to say that there can’t be stars that carry a little of our songs too while remaining unknown to us?”

***

_Do you remember him as I do?_ Fingon wasn’t sure if he was asking the vast ancient ocean he was facing, or his own sea of memories.

“We were close to you long ago,” Fingon spoke to the ocean. “When I was but a child, my cousin and I played and sang by your waters. Did you know all along that Eärendil’s light would be placed among the heavens, and my friend—a fallen star buried underneath the flames and the earth?”

Futile tears as salty as ocean water streamed down Fingon’s face as the mournful waves ceaselessly flowed in and ebbed out before him.

“Would you have borne him up out of the waves too, had he chosen you instead of the flames?”

~*~*~*~*~*~

Years had passed since his return to Aman, but every evening, Fingon sat by the seaside of his childhood with his harp and a map journaling the celestial motions of the sky. He picked a star to sing to for the night; for since his re-embodiment, Fingon chose a different star each eve. He decided he would become acquainted with every star, one by one, and he even gave each of them a name if it didn’t already possess one.

He couldn’t distinguish whether he sang to the stars because of his longing to amuse himself with the childish idea that their far traveling light may reach the one he had loved where he could not. Or because he yearned to believe that the stars though silent, listened and understood—that the songs he sang to them were bridges to a time and place when he was near his friend; by longing for the remote past, he could become who he had been if only for a moment—and in every piece of his yearnings, his cousin was by his side and finally home.

Thus, as he had previously done on many late evenings, Fingon told stories of his friend to the star he had selected for the night. _I have seen Vairë’s tapestries… and I know of his crimes and the blood spilled for the oath. I know of the guilt and the despair that consumed him. But he is also the one who did many deeds of surpassing valour, the spirit of white fire… and my friend. He wasn’t in the Halls and I could not gain any answers. If you should find my friend and recognize him, tell me, please give me news of him._

Then he closed his eyes and began singing a simple song from a distant past—a song braided from memories of old Valinor. As his harp strings surrendered timbres as bittersweet as the ocean’s timeless spirit gathered inside the sleeve of a spiral shell, he remembered how Maedhros had hummed and laughed with abandon once, surrounded by the mingling lights of the Two Trees as the sky’s unspeakably tender hues spread into a setting smile.

And whilst Fingon sang, a voice called out to him as if from a great distance.

“Findekáno—”

The only company Fingon kept every evening had been his harp, the sea, and the stars. But on some nights when he sang with his eyes closed long enough, he imagined he could almost hear his friend calling his name, carried by a gentle sea breeze. And so when the faint voice called to him, he dismissed it as his own thought conjured out of his deep longing. 

He continued singing as he remembered the warmth of his cousin’s hands covering his eyes—the stilled moment just before the sky and the ocean opened to a solemn hymn to the lights; and he remembered the lost heavenly arc’s white splendor throbbing between the parallel worlds of blue as he sat laughing beside his friend upon silken sands.

“Finno—”

The voice spoke again sounding closer this time, but Fingon’s eyes remained closed, and he continued to sing.

It wasn’t until he heard the voice faintly humming to his song when Fingon abruptly stopped.

Eyes flying open, he frantically searched for the source of the sound as he rushed to stand. And when he turned, a familiar slender figure stood alone in the distance.

“Maitimo?” Fingon exclaimed, his voice trembling.

His friend was walking towards him now. The forlorn sea breeze had enticed all the long strands of Maedhros’ hair with its song—free red waves that cascaded down his back and shoulders flowing in shapes of undulating river waters returning to their Sea. From afar, he was the sunlight rapture of a half-remembered autumn dream when the trees were at their most beautiful—when the loosening of incandescent wild leaves became whispers of soft goodbyes as they died in gold and red. 

But as he drew near, the golden sheen around his features intensified, and Fingon recognized the renewed light of the Two Trees upon his face—an image of restored wholeness merged with quiet radiance unimaginable and so poignant to Fingon it canceled out everything else surrounding him.

“Maitimo!” Fingon called out without hesitance this time.

Maedhros responded by humming Fingon’s song again, and the gentle voice Fingon had been so homesick for permeated through every pore of his fëa—a voice Fingon would have willingly searched and waited for an eternity even if he’d never find it again.

And as Fingon ran towards his friend, every quiet light in the sky he had ever sang to connected with his footsteps, and tears from his song-filled prayers gathered before him as a star-way beneath his feet.

***

“Káno?”

Fingon opened his eyes to a concerned voice calling his name.

“Káno, look at me, please,” spoke the kind voice again while two delicate hands cupped his face.

“Sorry, Írissë,” Fingon murmured. “Did I make you wait?”

“You silly old fool, you’ve been out here all through the night again. Let’s get you up.”

But when Aredhel removed her brother’s harp from his arms, she felt two arms impulsively pull her into an embrace. Though a little surprised at first, Aredhel wrapped her arms around him and held him tighter. They remained locked in a silent embrace until Fingon politely pulled away.

“Káno?” Aredhel finally spoke again.

“Írissë.”

“What was that for?”

“Nothing.”

Aredhel smiled sadly as she helped him to stand.

“Findekáno,” Aredhel spoke as she looked up at him, rubbing his arm. “He will come to us. I don’t care what anyone else said, or the rumors about him not being in the Halls. He’ll be here, too. You’ll see.”

Fingon managed to give his sister a grateful nod before reaching for his star map. He started to pack when Aredhel patted him on the shoulder, forcing him to look at her again.

“And Káno?”

“Yes, Írissë?”

“Would you mind having company some of the time? Would it be all right if I joined you?”

Silence lingered in the air. But Aredhel persisted. “I can even bring my flute and we can play together. That is, if you’d like? And I’ll even stay out here with you as long as you’d like.”

“Sure,” Fingon finally replied. “I’d like that, Írissë.”

“Good. That way the stars don’t get tired of listening to only you night after night,” Aredhel teased as she gave him a playful punch on the arm.

As Fingon’s lips curled into a smile, a newly named white light sang softly from beyond the Circles of the World and gave itself for the new dawn.

~*~*~*~*~

_ —I’ll wait for you until we may meet on the silver way, where stars drift like pearls upon the forgotten Wells of Varda— _


End file.
